One of the things I really like is when a nature preserve has labels on plants that I have been trying to identify -- like this jojoba bush!
I've looked in my plant books, but it sure helps when there is a positive identification! The jojoba is just getting ready to bloom --
We found a wonderful place today! Forry had seen it on the map yesterday and we were going to check it out, but watched the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics instead. I looked at their website, but it wasn't very informative. What we found was a series of seven ponds and a small fishing lake -- all pretty much in the middle of town! The lake even requires an URBAN fishing license which evidently is different from the Arizona fishing license.
The ponds are part of the City of Gilbert's (Gilbert is actually one of the suburban towns surrounding Phoenix.) sewage reclamation facility. They've done a great job with it. There are lots and lots of water birds, an area where kids can dig for "dino" bones, an archaeological dig site also for kids, a few campsites, an observatory and lots of walking paths. We were there for over three hours (until I got tired) and we only saw about half of it! While we didn't see any "new" birds, we saw lots of old friends -- Northern mocking birds, dowitchers, yellow legs, coots, sandpipers, black phoebes, doves, cormorants, Great Blue Herons, snowy egrets, Northern Shovelers, Canada geese, vultures, several Anna's hummingbirds, verdins, yellow rumped warblers, sparrows, finches and I'm sure there were others I'm forgetting!
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